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TG Scholars Seek to Be Heard and Seen in Academe

By Robin Wilson
The Chronicle for Higher Education

Used with Permission & Contributed by Gina Marie


Before he delivers a lecture on gender identity to his philosophy class this semester, Michael A. Gilbert must decide what to wear. Most likely, he will put on a knee-length skirt, a long-sleeved blouse, and low pumps. Standing before a mirror at home, he'll fix his wig and apply some makeup before heading out the door.

Professor Gilbert is a cross-dresser who teaches philosophy at York University, in Ontario. When he appears in drag this semester, it will be the second time that he has introduced students in his "Gender and Sexuality" course to a side of himself that he had kept hidden for nearly 50 years. "Having tenure is a two-edged sword," he says. "It means I can't be fired. But when it's appropriate, it's also incumbent upon me to take a risk and stick my neck out. My main goal is to provide an openness for transgendered people."

Dr. Gilbert is among a growing cadre of "trans" people on campuses who are going public. Organizations for gay, lesbian, and bisexual students have already begun tacking a "T" on the end of their names to embrace "transgendered" or "transsexual" students. In the past year, students and professors have also pushed universities to extend protection to transgendered people under policies that prevent discrimination against minorities.

What's more, work by transgendered scholars is making transgender studies a hot new topic. One of the most important contributions to the field, a transgender issue of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, edited by Susan Stryker, is due out next month from Duke University Press. A flurry of other publications on the topic is expected this spring and summer, and transsexual academics have started an electronic mailing list on the subject.

"We are pioneering a new field of scholarship," says Dr. Stryker, an independent scholar, who changed from male to female in 1991, a year before earning her Ph.D. in history from the University of California at Berkeley. "This whole area is going to become an increasingly big social concern over the next decade."

Despite its growing visibility, most people still need help in navigating the world of transgenderism. The label "transsexual" typically is reserved for people who have had at least some sex-change surgery and who take hormones to further the change. "Transgendered" is a catchall term that is used to refer to people who live as the opposite sex, whether or not they have had sex-change surgery. The description encompasses cross-dressers, also known as transvestites, and is used by some lesbians and gay men to describe themselves.

Transgendered people are gaining attention, but their numbers are still small. Only about .025 per cent of Americans identify themselves as transsexual, and about 2 per cent of Americans consider themselves transgendered, says a non-profit group, the International Foundation for Gender Education, in Waltham, Mass.

Having a sex change is a deeply personal matter, but several transsexual academics spoke freely about the experience for this article. Most of them told of being well received on their campuses after they changed gender.

C. Jacob Hale chose to become a man and sought tenure on California State University's Northridge campus in the same year. The timing was risky. But Dr. Hale, a professor of philosophy, didn't want to wait.

"I could not imagine going through my tenure review and then telling my colleagues, 'Guess what? There's something I forgot to tell you,'" says Dr. Hale, who made the decision to change sex in 1995. But the professor did feel vulnerable. "I was very afraid of losing my academic career," he says. "What else do philosophers do?"

The first thing Dr. Hale did after announcing that she would become a man was to buzz-cut her bleached-blond hair. Dr. Hale also began taking male hormones and had her breasts removed, but has stopped short of genital surgery.

Dr. Hale's sexual transition has caused a transformation in his scholarly interests. The professor began at Northridge studying the philosophy of science and mathematics. Now he works at the intersection of feminist theory, queer theory, and transgender theory. Near the top of a list of publications on his curriculum vitae is a paper called "Leatherdyke Boys and Their Daddies: How to Have Sex Without Women or Men."

Much of the research in the emerging field of transgender studies is the work of scholars, like Dr. Hale, who consider themselves transgendered. Although male-to-female transitions are the more common, a lot of recent scholarly work explores the opposite change.

It comes as no surprise that some people have problems with such lines of research. Bradford Wilson, executive director of the traditionalist National Association of Scholars, says he objects to any group of people's studying themselves and calling it scholarship. "When one chooses one's research subjects as a means of affirming one's difference, I think that one runs the risk of distorting the scholarly enterprise," he says. "This is not necessarily scholarly. It's political."

But Dr. Rubin says it is not unusual for scholars in any field to write about their own experiences. "To claim that we're skewing our scholarship because we're writing from a position fails to recognize that everybody is similarly situated," says Dr. Rubin, who landed a coveted lecturer's job at Harvard in 1991 while he was still a woman, completing a Ph.D at Brandeis University. Dr. Rubin made his sexual transition, without any problems, four years after he arrived at Harvard, he says.

Deirdre N. McCloskey is one faculty member who hasn't made her transsexualism the subject of her study -- at least not yet. She continues to work on the same questions about the economy that interested her when she was Donald McCloskey. But her writing is now self-consciously female. Donald had been well known for his pointed challenges to the basic assumptions that economists make. Dr. McCloskey, who began making the change to Deirdre two years ago, still poses such challenges. But now she frequently refers to herself as "Aunt Deirdre" in tweaking the predominantly male profession.

In her first book as a female author, Deirdre McCloskey takes her colleagues to task for what she sees as their overreliance on theory and statistics to explain human behavior. Donald did that, too. But unlike Donald's work, Deirdre's book, published last year by Amsterdam University Press, is full of references to gender. "There's a woman's point here," she writes in one chapter of The Vices of Economists: The Virtues of the Bourgeoisie.

She acknowledges that not everyone approves of her interpretation of what it means to be a woman. "Red flags go up when you speak of thinking like a woman, but that's what I do," she says. "The crucial point is that it's not because I've consulted page 35 of the manual on how to be a girl. It seems to come from inside."

Like Dr. McCloskey, Michelle Stanton also talks about noticing "a softening in body and perceptions" since she changed from male to female in 1992. As a man, Dr. Stanton was drawn to the technological side of television and film production. He wrote several articles for the journal of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. But after becoming a woman, says Dr. Stanton, "I never wrote for them again." She explains: "In the production side, you're involved in physical activity, moving sets, pushing cameras. I didn't want to do that anymore." Now her research and teaching concern the marketing and advertising aspects of the entertainment industry, fields she calls "more people-oriented."

Most of the transgendered professors interviewed for this article describe their transitions on campus as uneventful. Dr. Stanton even calls hers "tranquil." Universities, particularly large research institutions, are known for being tolerant places and may therefore be among the most comfortable venues for someone undergoing a sex change.

Even Valerie J. Harvey, a professor of computer and information systems at Robert Morris College, a small liberal-arts institution in Pennsylvania, underwent a change from male to female in 1996 without a hitch. Jo Ann M. Sipple, vice-president for academic and student affairs at the college, acknowledges that some of Dr. Harvey's colleagues found the experience "unnerving." But officials were more concerned about how students would react. "We have a fairly conservative student population, and I thought maybe some of them would object on moral or religious grounds," recalls Ms. Sipple. The college had counselors on hand to help students cope when Dr. Harvey announced the change. "But," the administrator recalls, "there were no complaints."

For Wynd D. Harris, a professor of marketing and international business at Quinnipiac College, the transition has not been that easy. The professor changed names from William to Wynd last May, and in August asked to be recognized as female.

But the college balked. Dr. Harris had been taking hormones but had not yet had genital surgery when he requested the change. The university asked for proof that the professor was a woman. "They told me I had to have a physical exam," recalls Dr. Harris. The professor refused. In October, the college suspended Dr. Harris and started termination proceedings against her.

Pat Smith, a spokesman for Quinnipiac, says Dr. Harris made a series of requests that have troubled the college. First, he says, the professor asked to be recognized as Jewish (he had been a Protestant), then he wanted to be considered American Indian, and then he wanted to be called a woman.

Nonetheless, a committee of faculty members voted nine to one last month, with one abstention, to retain Professor Harris. Now the provost must decide what to do. In the meantime, Dr. Harris has had sex-change surgery and is legally female.

To head off situations like the one facing Dr. Harris, some transsexuals are pushing for administrative protection from discrimination. The effort isn't widespread, but it is happening at some prominent institutions.

The University of Iowa has already adopted a policy that protects people from discrimination based on their "gender identity."

Ben Singer, a graduate student in English who had sex-change surgery in academic 1995-96, has pushed for a similar policy at Rutgers University. He says his adviser became angry when he told her he was having a sex change. "As a feminist, her perception was that I was giving up my womanhood," recalls Mr. Singer. He decided to lobby the university to make things easier for people like him.

Last month, the executive vice-president at Rutgers directed administrators to provide protection for "people who have changed sex or who are in the process of changing their sex." But Mr. Singer says he objects to the plan because it ignores transgendered people who may have no intention of having sex-change surgery.

The Transgender Task Force, a small group of students at Harvard University, has persuaded the student Undergraduate Council there to add "gender identity or expression" to the list of protected categories in the council's policy against discrimination. The task force is now going on to ask that the entire university change its non-discrimination policy, but administrators are trying to put the brakes on the effort.

"I advised the students that this was a matter about which there was not a great deal of information or understanding," says Harry R. Lewis, dean of Harvard College. "I thought their job was initially to educate the community."

Harvard may already be doing a good job of educating people about the issue, whether it realizes it or not. Last year, it began allowing Alex S. Myers, a transgendered student who dresses like a man but is biologically a woman, to live on an all-male floor of a campus dormitory. Mr. Myers, who is part of the Transgender Task Force, is among a group of transgendered people who don't take hormones or undergo genital surgery, and don't plan to.

"There is a contingent of younger people who see that you can live as transgendered without having surgery," says Mr. Myers, who wears his hair slicked back and speaks in a tenor voice. "The reason I pass as a man has nothing to do with my genetics and everything to do with society. Gender is completely different now than it was 20 years ago."

A discussion on the article is also taking place at the CHE website at this address:

http://chronicle.com/colloquy/98/transgender/transgender.htm



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